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Coffee makes men stupid

Posted February 08, 2011

“Two heads are better than one,” so the saying goes. Not if you happen to be male, stressed, and drinking coffee. A recent study, carried out by Doctor Lindsay St. Claire, a psychologist based at Bristol University, revealed that coffee helps women cope better in a stressful meeting but has the opposite effect on men.

So ladies, the next time you face your male adversaries across the conference table don’t hesitate to say, “Shall I be mother?” before pouring them a thumping great cup of coffee. Who cares if they are inwardly stifling a snigger at your eagerness to please? Just make sure you and your female colleagues keep topping up that coffee because, provided you match the men cup for cup, you will eventually triumph.

Apparently when two men are working together under stressful conditions caffeine makes their performance worse. For pairs of women, on the other hand, drinking coffee improves their performance. For example, in the study, men took twenty seconds longer to solve a puzzle whereas women were 100 seconds faster.

These findings have clearly worried the researchers and they are now suggesting that further studies are urgently carried out 'because many ... meetings, including those at which military and other decisions of great import are made, are likely to be male-dominated.'

I wonder how much coffee Tony and George drank as they deliberated on their plan of action for Iraq? I’m guessing a lot.